


when the tunnel ends

by iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid



Category: Black Panther (2018), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Coping, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Shuri is Awesome But She's Dealing with a LOT, Sort Of, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 05:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid/pseuds/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid
Summary: After the abrupt annihilation of half the Universe, what is the grieving, lost leader of a grieving, lost nation supposed to do?Thor's trying to figure that out. And as it turns out, he's not the only one.





	when the tunnel ends

**Author's Note:**

> (As much as I rag on Infinity War, it sure as hell gave me a lot of angsty content to roll with, huh?)
> 
> The title is inspired by _Carry Your Will_ by the Mowgli's. If you have a moment, I really recommend checking it out, it's a great song.
> 
> A monumentally HUGE thank you to [Trudy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trudy/pseuds/Trudy), who I met in a Thor discord server and who was the world's best beta for this story. Seriously. The best. I cannot overstate how much help Trudy was. Were we not separated by the width of a continent I'd be baking some "thanks for being the world's best beta" cookies as we speak. Another thank you to pretty much everybody in that server, too, because Trudy and I both agree that they're all very motivational when it comes to content creation, and this little piece would still be a half-finished draft collecting dust in my Google docs since August if it weren't for them.
> 
> Last note: This is technically a stand-alone oneshot, but as it ends rather ambiguously, I can pretty much say for certain that it will have either a second chapter or a separate companion piece. Stay tuned, and enjoy!

A pair of warriors stand guard at either side of the lab entrance, spears in hand. Both level Thor with hard, unyielding gazes as he approaches. His childhood lessons in diplomacy and politesse are long centuries past, but he draws on what little of it he can remember now. He stops a respectful distance away, inclines his head with his best disarming smile, clasps his hands in front of him to emphasize that he's come unarmed.

“I am Thor, Son of Odin and King of Asgard,” he says, though they certainly already know that. “If it pleases the Queen, I would like to speak with her.”

The warriors exchange a glance, wary and suspicious.

Thor cannot remember if either of these two fought in the battle or if they remained here guarding their then-Princess, but either way, word travels quickly. He can sense the trepidation in their faces. They know what he is capable of. And that knowledge — that these warriors have no reason to trust him, that they may even _fear_ him — sits as a heavy weight on his shoulders. He lets that weight press him down, allows his shoulders to fall, tries to make himself look smaller.

“What do you want with the Queen?” asks the warrior to his right.

“I assure you, I only wish to speak with her,” he says. “Please, if you would, tell her I’m here. If she turns me away, I’ll leave without complaint.”

The warriors exchange a look again, and the woman on the left lifts her arm and speaks lowly into the beaded bracelet on her wrist. She speaks a language Thor does not recognize, and it takes some effort not to lean into Allspeak so that he can give these warriors the privacy they deserve as they converse with their Queen. He does hear his own name somewhere in that stream of unfamiliar sounds, though.

The response comes back in accented English.

“You can send him in, Ayo, thank you.”

The two of them give a curt nod in unison, stepping aside to let him pass, and Thor offers each of them a grateful smile as he walks through the entrance. It's a look they do not return, and he can feel their intense eyes on his back even after the door automatically closes behind him.

He does not blame them.

They've all lost too much to risk putting their trust in strangers, even those strangers that aided in the battle. _Especially_ those that aided in the battle, really, given the amount of Wakandan lives that were lost before Thanos ever even had a chance to snap his fingers.

Thor pushes the thought away and makes his way down a spiraling ramp, descending into what must be the most spacious laboratory he's ever seen, let alone on Earth, and he looks around at the gleaming metal walls and high ceilings with his eyes full of wonder.

This place is the size of a palace.

He can hear, below, faint bits of sound. The murmur of a voice, the clink of metal, the whirring of gears and motors. He steps down onto the main floor of the lab and sees her, perched on a chair at the center of a wide expanse of churning and shifting holographic screens.

She mutters something in her language, a curse by the sound of it, and hastily types something into the rightmost screen. As she types, she distractedly calls over her shoulder, “You wanted to see me?”

“Uh — yes,” he says. “Thank you, for agreeing to speak with me. I am Thor, Son of Odin and King of Asgard.”

“I know who you are,” she says, turning her head for just a moment so he can see the smirk on her face. “Your entrance into the battle was not exactly subtle.”

Thor smiles, crossing some of her expansive lab to meet her, and as he draws nearer he finds his gaze pulled to the center screen in front of her, where a transparent hologram of the Mind Stone spins slowly in place. Small bits of foreign text appear and disappear around it as it moves.

“Banner tells me you may be able to find the Infinity Stones.”

She gives a soft _humph_ without looking at him. “Does Dr. Banner go around telling everyone about our research, or just you?”

Thor pauses, tilts his head. “Just me, probably.”

The Queen sighs and, after a quick movement of her hand, the screens all wink out of existence. She spins around in her chair to face him, and Thor is struck for a moment by how _young_ she is before she stands up and asks, “So, is that what you came here to talk to me about? My research on the Infinity Stones?”

Thor hesitates, trying not to focus so much on the lines of exhaustion in her face, the barely concealed pain in her eyes — the exact sort of pain that, really, he’s quite used to seeing in the eyes of those around him. Or he _should_ be used to it, at any rate. The Queen carries it with the grace of someone far older than herself, though, with her arms crossed over her chest and eyebrows raised in expectation.

“No,” he finally says. “It’s not that. I… suppose you know already that a small group of escape pods landed here this morning, carrying with it the remainder of my people.”

“I’m aware, yes.”

Thor nods, something uncomfortable gripping at his heart. “There aren't many of them, just a little over a hundred.”

 _The tiniest fraction of what we were,_ he thinks but doesn’t say. It’s still a hundred more than he ever expected to see again, and he had been so relieved at the sight of those pods that the mere thought of it still makes his one good eye burn with unshed tears. Brunnhilde will… _eventually_ forgive him for any injuries he may have caused by hugging her too tightly. Probably.

He clears his throat and says, “You've been so gracious in letting those who fought in the battle stay within your borders, and I hate to ask any more of you, but I have a duty to my people. They’re in desperate need of shelter, and food, and water. If there’s anywhere that I might be able to take them, anywhere you might have room to spare, I would be forever in your debt.”

A small, guilty voice in the back of his mind says, _You already are in her debt, Odinson, you're in debt to half the universe._

_You should have gone for the head._

He grits his teeth and shoves that thought deep, deep down.

Now is not the time.

The Queen nods slowly, her gaze drifting from him as she thinks. Her head tilts right and then left, gears turning.

When she says, “I’m sure we can find somewhere to get them settled,” it’s all Thor can do not to give an audible sigh of relief. Some small fraction of his worries lift away with that one sentence. He could have found someplace else for the rest of Asgard, he’s sure, but the prospect of taking all those exhausted and wartorn people on yet another journey to an uncertain destination had his stomach tied in knots.

The Queen continues, “I know you don't have anywhere else to go. The whole world is in such chaos that I doubt anyone _else_ would welcome a group of alien refugees, however small the group might be. But you helped us defend Wakanda, and we do not forget that. Those… _things_ … might have overtaken the country without your help.”

Thor doesn't say anything to that. He only offers her a smile tinged with sadness — because it’s true, though he still wishes he had done _more_ — and he watches as Shuri taps a bead on her bracelet. A holographic map springs forth from her wrist and hovers between them.

“This is the capital city,” she explains, pointing as she goes. She swipes the map this way and that, zooms in with a tap of her fingers. “Ah… _There._ See? Here we are, at the lab behind the palace. And _here,”_ she says, highlighting an area in red, “is a new construction of homes that should be plenty of space for a hundred or so Asgardians. It was due to be completed soon, so no one yet lives in it. You can get them all settled in there. It is not much, but—”

“It’s more than enough,” Thor says. “Much more.”

She smiles at that. “Yes, well, if there are any problems, you can bring them straight to me. Does that sound good?”

Thor nods, even though he already knows he’s unlikely to bother her with anything else. Not unless he must, not unless it’s a last resort. “Thank you,” he says, knowing words cannot come close to expressing exactly how grateful he really is. “You are a kind and generous leader, Queen Shuri.”

She freezes at that — and suddenly, inexplicably, she looks as if he's insulted her. The tiniest piece of her diplomatic mask slips, pain flashing across her features for just a moment, and a tiny voice at the back of his head that must be his but _feels_ like Loki’s says, _Oh, no, you idiot, look what you’ve gone and done now._

“Please,” she says, “don't call me that.”

“I’m sorry, I meant no offense—”

“No, it… it’s alright. I’m just…” her voice cuts off, and she bites her lip for half a second before shaking her head. “I can’t exactly tell anyone else not to call me their Queen, but… well, you’re royalty, too, aren’t you? So there is no reason for you to call me that.”

Thor freezes halfway through another apology, his mouth open, before he remembers himself and shuts it.

 _Oh,_ he thinks.

She doesn’t want to be called by her title, which… well, that’s a sentiment Thor understands far more than she could ever know, isn’t it? She clearly wishes no one would call her by the title at all, but with all the chaos of the past week she must know that her people need the stability, the continuity.

Thor hesitates for just a moment, but then he takes another step toward her, and he reaches out and lays a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I understand,” he says, thinking of golden sparks drifting over the cliffs in Norway, of a meager few candles lit in a Sakaaran dungeon. “Losing a loved one is always difficult, but it’s made no easier when you’re expected to carry their title after they’ve passed.”

She stares up at him with wide eyes, lips slightly parted as if she means to say something, but she quickly reins in her emotions and wipes a hand over her face.

“I haven’t lost T’Challa,” she says, and although her voice wavers there is an unmistakable conviction there that Thor can't help admiring.

She sits back in her chair and spins around, waving the screens back into existence.

“Dr. Banner has already told you some of what we’re doing, yes? Might as well see that your information is accurate.”

Thor nods, giving no mention to her deliberately quick change in subject. As he watches, she taps the model of the Mind Stone and moves it with a finger, examining her scores of notes and diagrams that pop up as the stone moves.

“Vision was able to sense when the other Infinity Stones were close, or even when someone who'd been in _contact_ with a stone was close,” she says, her voice growing steadier as she returns to this familiar routine of explaining her research. “I have been going through all of the data I collected when I was trying to save him, and there are energy signatures from the Mind Stone that left a sort of… _digital imprint_ on him. Theoretically I could decode exactly what part of the Stone was exhibiting that tracking ability at a molecular level and reproduce it, but… whether that will lead us to a specific Infinity Stone, or whichever of them is closest, or even only to someone who has been in contact with them remains to be seen.”

Thor doesn't bother to hide the surprise in his face, though she doesn't turn around to see it anyway. Banner told him the young Queen was a genius, but hearing about it was one thing, and _seeing_ all this coming from a Midgardian teenager is quite another.

“Of course, even if we find one of the Infinity Stones, there is no telling whether all six of them would still be in the same place, and if not, whether we will _need_ all six,” she adds. “Everyone's first instinct is to assume that we must collect the entire set in order to reverse what has happened, but… simply snapping our fingers and bringing back everyone that Thanos took from us…”

She shakes her head, gives the Mind Stone model another spin, and Thor can’t help but think she just needed something to do with her hands.

“It could be catastrophic. We don't know if everyone who disappeared is truly—” her voice catches, just enough for Thor to notice, “— _dead,_ or if they are lost to us in some other way. But they could all be in the afterlife already. They could already be walking amongst our ancestors, and for us to pull them back when they've already passed on…”

Thor imagines his friends, his family, the people he's lost, all being torn from their rightful place in Valhalla.

He finishes for her, his voice solemn, “It would be terribly unfair to them.”

Shuri nods, and she ducks her head down, bringing one hand up to her face. She does not answer right away.

After a moment, she sniffs, and she reaches up to tap the leftmost screen, bringing up a diagram of the other five stones, each with a few notes of their own. She brings her left hand up to the image of the Time Stone, fingers pinched together, and with the opening of her hand, it expands to the size of the Mind Stone diagram beside it.

The notes on the Time Stone are far less extensive.

“Reversing what has happened may not be an option, but I cannot — _we_ cannot — simply leave things as they are now and move on,” she says, making a valiant effort to hide the strain in her voice, “so we may have to stop it from happening in the first place.”

Thor bites on the inside of his cheek, watching Shuri with worried eyes.

“Time travel?”

She only nods, not turning to face him. There’s a certain tenseness in her shoulders, a tremor in the hand that reaches up to spin the Time Stone once more — pieces of the dam chipping away, though she keeps it resolutely intact.

“All of this is… impressive,” Thor admits, treading carefully. “Stopping it from happening at all is something I hadn’t considered, but you’re right. If we are to undo what has happened, that may be our best course of action.”

Shuri nods again, staring up at the Time Stone with her hands in her lap.

“It’s very impressive,” he repeats. “Only it seems a bit unfair, that all of this falls on you.”

He sees her stiffen at his words, and she says, “It is my responsibility to fix this.”

Thor frowns. “Why is it yours alone?”

“Because it was _my_ technology that drew an Infinity Stone here and brought the battle to Wakanda?” Her words have gained an angry edge, and she waves a hand in the air, like that much should have been obvious. But he can tell that that’s not all, that she’s not finished, and she adds, “Because I was not able to remove the stone in time for it to be destroyed. Because I have a _duty_ to my people now, and half of them are _gone_ without so much as bodies to bury—”

“Shuri—”

“Because I am the only person who _can_ fix it,” she presses on as though she didn’t hear him, resolute despite the waver in her voice. “I’m the only one who can bring him back.”

Her voice cracks at the end of her sentence, the last two words fading to something so quiet that he barely hears it. Another chunk of the dam falls away.

“Shuri, you can’t…”

And now, as Thor speaks, he witnesses as the dam reaches its breaking point.

She is still facing away from him, but he sees her bring both hands up to her face, her shoulders hunching as she curls in on herself. The holographic screens surrounding her all flicker and fade away to nothing, and without the intimidating expanse of her research closing in around her she looks so much smaller, so much more like a child, sitting alone in the center of her lab.

Thor waits, hesitant even now. She barely knows him. She may not want him to intrude. She might prefer it if he turned and left now, left her to grieve alone.

But in the end, he can’t, and he knows he can’t. He steels his resolve and walks in a careful, wide circle around her chair until he's standing in front of her, and he lowers himself to one knee so that he is just below her eye level.

Already she is trying to collect herself again, shove everything back beyond the dam, build it back up brick by brick.

“I— I’m sorry— I have to—” she starts to say, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes.

“You do not have to do anything,” Thor says, his voice firm but gentle. “Not right now.”

“No,” she insists, shaking her head. Her hands fall into her lap. “I do. There are _terabytes_ of information still— still left to decode, and—”

“Shuri,” he interrupts. “Please, listen to me.”

She clamps down on whatever protests might have been about to spill forth. A muscle in her jaw twitches. Tears still build on her lashes, but her expression is as angry as it is grief-stricken. There is misery and hopelessness there, yes, but she’s furious with herself for allowing any of it to show, much less in front of a near-stranger.

Thor has to resist the urge to smile. The two of them are more alike than he realized.

Instead he offers his hand. Shuri wipes the tears from her cheeks, though still more are bound to come, and she silently looks down at his hand with red-rimmed eyes.

She lets out the smallest of sighs and takes it, and he covers her hand with both of his.

“I understand some of what you’re going through,” he tells her. “I only became King of Asgard recently, as little as… a few weeks ago, if you can believe it, though it feels much longer. My father died, and then the losses seemed to keep piling up from there. My closest friends killed, my whole planet reduced to…”

Thor trails off, gaze drifting from her — he’s not entirely certain how much he’s willing to speak of it aloud, now that it comes down to it. And Shuri catches that, it seems. Her brow creases, but she says nothing at his inability to continue. She only waits.

He clears his throat, offers a small smile. “It’s alright, though,” he assures her, “because at that point, I had a ship full of refugees to guide through the cosmos. I was their King, and they had all lost just as much as I had, if not more. I didn’t feel I had the right to grieve, not when all of those people were relying on me to rule them and keep them safe.”

He gives her hand a little squeeze.

“But believe me when I say this. You have the right to grieve. You have the right to mourn your own losses. Throwing yourself into this research, convincing yourself that you can ignore your pain if you just keep busy every second of every day…”

He can’t help thinking of the _Statesman,_ of the precious little time between Ragnarok and Thanos, the days he spent reeling from tragedy while completely unaware that the next tragedy was fast hurtling over the horizon. The false bravado he forced himself to maintain, the certainty that everything would turn out alright if he just kept _moving,_ if he just kept himself focused on the next task.

“It won’t work,” he tells her. “I know it won’t, because I’ve tried.”

She sniffs, looking down at their joined hands, and nods. And she says rather matter-of-factly, “Tunnel vision.”

“Er— I’m sorry?”

Shuri huffs a teary laugh and says, her voice very wet but with a ring of amusement, “Tunnel vision. A human expression, apparently, if you haven’t heard of it.”

Thor offers her a smile of his own. “It sounds like… an apt description.”

Again Shuri nods, distractedly this time, her eyes still downcast. She chews on the inside of her cheek.

And Thor waits.

“Half of my country is gone,” she finally says, impossibly quiet. Her fingers tighten around the side of his palm. “Even if I only consider Wakanda, that is still so many people gone, people I’ve known all my life, half the people that I am now responsible for, and… and it feels like none of that matters. I can’t… I can’t process any of it. I can’t feel anything for them, because I can’t feel anything at _all_ past this…” she trails off, lifting her free hand to tap at her chest, like she wants to physically pull the ache out of it, “... past this hole where T’Challa used to be.”

It’s then that Thor remembers what she said earlier, what started her on this slow path to the crumbling of her composure.

_I haven’t lost T’Challa._

She looks up at him now, bites down on the inside of her lip for a moment, and then asks, “What kind of Queen is that? What kind of _person_ is that?”

Thor opens his mouth to automatically tell her that, no, she can’t think of it that way, how she processes her own grief surely has no bearing on what kind of ruler she can be, but — something about what she’s said hits him rather suddenly and renders him momentarily speechless.

He thinks of the _Statesman_ again, the last he saw of it. He can’t help it, he’s _always_ thinking of it. The fissures burning into the walls, streams of brilliant violet against the black that seared their image against his eyes, nearly blinding him to everything else. The oxygen syphoned out of the crumbling ship into the unforgiving vacuum of space, his ears ringing. An ache, deep in the marrow of his bones.

He remembers stumbling forward, his shaking fingers clutching the front of Loki’s leathers. He remembers how horribly cold and still his little brother was, how despondent and lonely Heimdall’s body was, only a few yards away and yet still too far for Thor to reach. And despite the dozens of others, the dozens of _his people_ scattered and broken all around him, there was simply no room in his heart to feel anything other than _this,_ to lament anything but the fact that his brother and his best friend were taken away from him within minutes of each other.

He’s still running from all the others, if he’s being honest with himself. Still holding the worst of his losses close to his chest, using them as fuel for his vengeance, propelling him from one task to the next. Still stubbornly refusing to allow himself to feel any of the rest, for fear that he’ll collapse beneath the weight of it, for fear that if he succumbs to it he’ll never get back up again.

_Tunnel vision._

It’s amazing, he thinks, Midgardians and their peculiar expressions. An apt description indeed.

Thor gulps down the lump in his throat, quickly swiping at his watering eyes before returning his hand to hold hers.

“A grieving one, I think,” he finally answers. “A _sane_ one. I’d be concerned if you were feeling anything else, to be honest.”

She stares at him for a moment, looking near tears again. She bites her bottom lip, gives a quick nod — not quite agreeing, he thinks, but maybe _accepting_ — and then she places her free hand on top of his. The smile she offers is small but genuine.

Thor knows, of course, that she does not quite believe him. Which is alright, he thinks; a few kind words won’t untie all the knots that her emotions must have become, the guilt and the grief and the fear that grips at her heart. All he can do is try to help.

What would Heimdall have done in this situation, he wonders? It was always Heimdall that Thor sought out in times like these, when he felt at his lowest, and it was always Heimdall that managed to make him feel worlds better. In his earlier years it was more often Loki, sometimes Mother, and sometimes — but admittedly, rarely — even his father, too.

What would any of them do?

It doesn’t matter, he decides. What matters is what _he_ would do. He latches onto the first idea he has with a desperate swiftness, speaks it into existence before he gets the chance to doubt himself.

“Can you tell me something, Shuri?” When she nods, he asks, “Have you ever been to a planet other than this one?”

Shuri blinks, raising her eyebrows at the unexpected question, and then her brow furrows. “I — no? I haven’t, not yet.”

Thor nods, gives her hand one last pat, and stands to his full height. In his mind he is already running through a list, all the Realms he’s visited in the past few centuries, the many more worlds he discovered during his quest to find the Infinity Stones. There are more than a few that may have been untouched by Thanos’ destruction, worlds that had never had inhabitants to decimate in the first place, but were no less full of life.

Colorful, beautiful planets, full of wonder and splendor the likes of which a Midgardian would be hard pressed to find on Earth. Stormbreaker could bring them there in half a heartbeat and return them just as quickly.

He asks Shuri, as he smiles in earnest this time:

“Would you like to?”


End file.
